Through the development of my Garden of Eden project, I learned a great deal about L-Systems, simply by prerequesite. L-Systems are quite useful for modelling organic structures, but this is only because they are quite useful for modelling self-similar structures in general. It just so happens that organic structures are often fractaline and self-similar, the reasoning for which is its own fascinating rabbit hole. Knowing that this tree generator I had created represented only a small subset of the possibilities for L-Systems, I wished to create an environment in which others could see the true range of possibilities L-Systems represent and use this environment interactively as a means of understanding the concept themselves. After some diligent code writing, I created an interactive playground in which you can do just that.
Contained within the playground are an invaluable handful of pre-built examples, showcasing how to construct famous patterns using an L-System methodology of iteration and replacement. By altering the ‘constants’, you alter the list of letters that correspond to genuine line segments. Plusses (+) and Minuses (-) on the other hand, corresponded to a rotation of the Turtle’s angle. All other letters simply define replacement rules. From this simple set of rules, many beautiful structures can arise.
